Customer Rating:  
Summary: Cornwell Phoned This One In
Comment: This book is just awful. Did Cornwell write this on her Blackberry? It just seems like something written for the text-messaging crowd. Her prose is anemic, her characters rehashed from the Scarpetta series, the story line is flat, and the sharp, detailed writing she has given us in the past is as stale as yesterday's Starbucks. And how many cops ride Ducati motorcycles? Honestly... Cornwell phoned this one in. She's just writing for retirement money now.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Difficult to even attempt
Comment: Thankfully this was given to me, I am glad I did not bother with spending money on this. I agree that one star is maybe too much. I fell in love with Ms. Cornwell years ago and have been an avid reader since. Scarpetta was a character I enjoyed until the last few books which have been less than her best. I tried Southern Cross, did not finish it, forced my way through At Risk, but find myself once again not being able to finish The Front. Maybe the strain of bringing out too many books in too many areas too quickly has lowered her standards but they just have not been the enjoyable all night read they used to be. The Front has been relegated to the bathroom for the very rare times I get to soak and don't care what I read as long as I wouldn't be saddened if it gets wet. Ten years ago Cornwell would never be an I don't care book, now she is.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not enough is too much
Comment: The Front is ostensibly about a coalition formed by local Boston area police departments to reduce dependence on the Massachusetts State Police. It opens with the set up for a cold case investigation by the DA, Monique Lamont. She assigns her top investigator, Win Garano, to work with a local detective, a woman nicknamed "Stump", who runs The Fronts mobile crime lab. These three characters are adequately delineated, although they do come across as types. So far, so good.
Regrettably, the plot rapidly deteriorates into a melange of vignettes that fail to gel into a coherent story. What evidently was meant to be "cut to the bone" and "quicksilver" is merely muddled. Too much going on too fast, with a slapdash finale. Too bad.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Shuffle
Comment: I was happy to see a couple of new books by Cornwell that I had not read. Even though these were not of the Scarpetta series, which is a favorite of mine, Cornwell's books are usually worth a read. Not this one. The writing seemed to shuffle along, full of depressing, inconsequential scenes with a few fuzzy, antisocial characters. I almost abandoned it several times. I actually flipped to the front to see if I had the wrong author. In my Kindle version, many of the words beginning with the letter P were capitalized. In fact, it was that mystery and not the story that led me to finish reading, thereby discovering that the whole story was a front. The ending seemed like a transplant mistake, and I never did solve the capitalized Ps. Unhappily I realize that the other unread Cornwell book I have is the first in this Win series. I shudder at the thought.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I'll waste as little time ...
Comment: ...on this review as she did writing this "book". I didn't think my opinion of Cornwell's latest literary efforts could sink any lower...they have. Please don't bother buying this, and send her a message that when she wants to get serious again about writing, send us all a free copy of her next book (and an apology) to compensate for the money wasted on her last few efforts.
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